Wednesday, December 2, 2015

It used to be just scammers and spammers would send you unwanted email. The CAN-SPAM act made it the law that companies had to provide an opt out process, and had to stop sending you email once you opted out. But we know how the law favors mega-corporations like Safeway, so more and more companies are realizing that this legislation isn't being enforced. Most companies, when called out, will say "oops" and blame technical difficulties before taking you off their mailing list. Just that alone provides a pretty high bar since you have to opt out, and then tell them that they aren't honoring your request. At which point they say something like "we apologize and value your privacy" to the people who jump through all the hoops.

And then there's companies like Epicurious, who are owned by overseas mega-corporations and don't seem to care. And right when I was down to only one company I couldn't get to stop spamming me, I get sick of Safeway's emails that look like a 12 year old was texting me, opted out twice over a two week span, and still get their emails. I opted out an extra time because I couldn't find the screen shots from last week, so this is opt out #3.

But where Epicurious is a shitty company owned in some far away land, Safeway is a store that's just down the street from me. Their prices are a little high, and their selection isn't that great, but they are close to me, and sometimes they have good coupons.

Having high prices and a mediocre selection, this Safeway next to me is never crowded. It doesn't seem like they have too many customers left like me to alienate, because they lost me as a customer. There's an Albertson's just as a close.

Right now is the beginning of the process. I opted out a couple times, and I'm posting the screen grab I made last week so that when I do the next installment of this post, it'll be easy to see that I didn't mess with the dates on the image, because their system says that it will take 24 hours to process the request. A week from now when I show a stack of emails, it'll be easy to see that they aren't honoring the request, if I don't get any farther in the process.

Bellow you can see it even has the address of the store that's no longer getting my business.